Gauges Gone Wild

RockOn said:

Last year my odometer stopped working. After seeing how expensive and/or difficult it would be to fix I settled on installing under the seat and inside the air filter box a GPS Speedo/Odometer designed for boats. Works great. A few months ago my gauges, both tach and speedo, stopped sweeping when when turning on the ignition or one or the other gauge would not sweep but in any case the bike started up okay. Sometimes the speedo does not work, sometimes it does. So far, the tach always works. Today all LED's in both gauges flashed on and off repeatedly until I started the bike, then only the neutral LED was lit as it should be. The tach needle did sweep but not the speedo. So, as long as the bike still starts and runs fine I am not in dire straits but am very annoyed.

Any ideas about troubleshooting are very welcome.

PS This is regarding my '06 Classic.

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TURBO200R4 said:

I can't believe that you haven't received any help.
When the gauges sweep and the all the lights come on that is a test and i think it is done by the Speedo because i had the ecu disconnected and they still lit up and did the sweep.
A lot of times it is batt terminals loose
You need to pick a spot and monitor voltage.
Easiest to start at batt/fuses
Best test would be engine management relay terminal 87 and with the key on and kill switch on you should have about 12.5 volt does the sweep/lights
Now you can always for test purposes take a battery powered wire with a fuse and attach it to the ems relay terminal
87 and see if it does the sweep/lights
That is kind of checking in the middle of the circuit and depending on results which way you go.
Hth. Herman

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RockOn said:

Thanks Bud. I will do as you suggest. By the way, yesterday, instead of standing by the bike with it resting on the kick stand, I got on the bike, stood it straight up, stowed the kick stand away , turned ignition on and the bike immediately started with no crazy gauge LED's flashing on and off as they did the previous day when the bike was on it's stand.

So, that makes me think the kick stand switch, now 17 or 18 years old, may be the problem or part of it. Last night while on the couch watching the Ghandi movie I went to the Hermeys parts site and saw the kick stand switch for $62.00, gulp. Then the dim little light bulb in my brain switched on and I remembered buying some spare parts for the bike several years ago including a couple electrical switches. So, I put Ghandi on pause and hobbled out to the garage with a flashlight to examine my bike parts shelves and sure enough I found several goodies including a clutch switch, detent and related springs, gaskets and a side stand switch. I was happy to see the package said, "Made in Japan" instead of Britain. So, I will install it and see where that takes me in addition to your troubleshooting items.

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